HISTORY OF PORTUGUESE POETRY AND ELOQUENCE, FROM THE LATTER YEARS OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY UNTIL TOWARDS THE CLOSE OF THE SEVENTEENTH. _Decay of the ancient national energy in Portuguese Literature._ At the end of the sixteenth century the most brilliant period of Portuguese poetry had passed away. A new epoch did not, it is true, commence; for the style of invention and composition which during that century was introduced, continued essentially unaltered. The influence which the fantastic school of the Gongorists produced, in the first half of the seventeenth century, on most of the Portuguese writers, did not entirely repress the cultivation of the better style.[261] But the proper place to form a resting point in the account of the second period of the polite literature of Portugal is the present, for here genius ceased to advance, and dextrous talent merely traded on the stock which the sixteenth century had bequeathed. According to the plan of a history, in which it is intended to describe circumstantially, only the progress of poetic and rhetorical genius and taste, the account of Portuguese poetry and eloquence in the seventeenth century must therefore form merely a summary appendix to the preceding chapters. At the commencement of the present book it was remarked, that the loss of independence experienced by the kingdom of Portugal, was attended with no immediate injury to Portuguese literature. The Spanish language could obtain no higher consideration in Portugal than it already enjoyed. The humbled national pride took pleasure in the courageous defence of the national language, and the Castilian tongue only served to remind the patriotic Portuguese of the ignominious occupation of his country. But several circumstances concurred to limit poetic genius in Portugal to a somewhat monotonous continuation of the old style in a few branches of poetic composition, while in Spain dramatic poetry, full of national boldness, rapidly advanced in the career of well merited fame. That fate had denied a Lope de Vega to the Portuguese language is not sufficient to account for this contrast, the Spanish would still have been banished from the stage in Portugal, had a Portuguese national theatre vied with that of Spain. In that case the competition of numerous poets would, perhaps, have ensured the cultivation of dramatic composition in the language of the country, which, since the death of Gil Vicente, had been neglected. But even Gil Vicente, as has been already observed, wrote his first drama in Spanish; and in his subsequent works he interspersed the Spanish with the Portuguese language, as if he felt that the latter was not of itself fitted to supply dialogue throughout the whole of a dramatic performance. The genuine Portuguese comedies of Saa de Miranda and Antonio Ferreira were by no means sufficiently national to excite the imitation of a poet who might wish to produce an effect upon the great body of the Portuguese public.